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This paper investigates the relationship between interaction behaviors and the cognitive characteristics of participating individuals in engineering design teams engaged in concept generation. Individual characteristics were measured using the Kirton Adaption-Innovation inventory (KAI), which assesses an individual’s cognitive preference for structure in seeking and responding to change. Team interactions were measured using the Interaction Dynamics Notation (IDN), which allows interaction behaviors to be quantitatively analyzed. A correlation analysis revealed statistically significant correlations between individual characteristics and specific interaction behaviors and ideation utterances. An interaction sequence analysis of the team data also revealed specific interaction sequences associated with greater probabilities of idea occurrence within the team. These findings serve as a first step towards building a cognitive-behavioral model of engineering design team performance.
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Predicting A Paradigm Shift: Exploring the Relationship Between Cognitive Style And The Paradigm-Relatedness Of Design Solutions
Nearly 60 years ago, Thomas Kuhn revolutionized how we think of scientific discovery and innovation when he identified that scientific change can occur in incremental developments that improve upon existing solutions, or it can occur as drastic change in the form of a paradigm shift. In engineering design, both types of scientific change are critical when exploring the solution space. However, most methods of examining design outputs look at whether an idea is creative or not and not the type of creativity that is deployed or if we can predict what types of individuals or teams is more likely to develop a paradigm-shifting idea. Without knowing how to identify who will generate ideas that fit a certain paradigm, we do not know how to build teams that can develop ideas that better explore the solution space. This study provides the first attempt at answering this question through an empirical study with 60 engineering design student teams over the course of a 4- and 8-week design project. Specifically, we sought to identify the role of cognitive style using KAI score, derived from Kirton’s Adaption-Innovation (A-I) theory, on the paradigm-relatedness of ideas generated by individuals and teams. We also sought to investigate the role of crowdsourcing for measuring the paradigm-relatedness of design solutions. The results showed that KAI was positively related to a greater likelihood of an individual’s idea being categorized as paradigm-breaking. In addition, the team KAI diversity was also linked to a greater likelihood of teams’ ideas being categorized as paradigm-challenging. Finally, the results support the use of crowdsourcing for measuring the paradigm-relatedness of design solutions.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1825830
- PAR ID:
- 10286200
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Proceedings of the ASME 2021 International Design Engineering Technical Conferences and Computers and Information in Engineering Conference
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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This paper investigates the relationship between interaction behaviors and the cognitive characteristics of participating individuals in engineering design teams engaged in concept generation. Individual characteristics were measured using the Kirton Adaption-Innovation inventory (KAI), which assesses an individual’s cognitive preference for structure in seeking and responding to change. Team interactions were measured using the Interaction Dynamics Notation (IDN), which allows interaction behaviors to be quantitatively analyzed. A correlation analysis revealed statistically significant correlations between individual characteristics and specific interaction behaviors and ideation utterances. An interaction sequence analysis of the team data also revealed specific interaction sequences associated with greater probabilities of idea occurrence within the team. These findings serve as a first step towards building a cognitive-behavioral model of engineering design team performance.more » « less
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